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 Become a polyglot chatter without training
Become a polyglot chatter without training

dwergs says ( 05 Aug 2006 ):

 

planet earth msn display pictureDo you have a lot of Messenger contacts from around the globe, but lost your "Learn French/Chinese/Suomi/Swahili In One Week" audio tape? Microsoft to the rescue, because they have a research division in India working on a prototype that will be able to translate your instant messages into your contact's mother tongue (if it's different than yours) and in real time, much like a human interpreter.

A Microsoft official claims that it will be the first two-way translator that would work real time inside an online chat/messenger framework. The number of available languages depends on the number of "corpora's" Microsoft manages to collect in as many languages. "Corpora's are texts with same content in two different languages that enables a machine translator to learn a new language. The larger the number of corpora's, the better the translator learns".

There's no mention of the release date and the prices (if applicable) of the MSN/Windows Live Messenger translation service, but my guess is it won't arrive until next year.

[Source: Indiatimes Infotech]



 Let's chat about sex, baby
Let's chat about sex, baby

dwergs says ( 03 Aug 2006 ):

 

Those of you who have never been involved in cybersex raise your hands...

Hah! Just what I thought, PERVERTS! No, I'm kidding, because if you weren't the instigator you might have instead been confronted with unsolicited cybersex and that's no laughing matter. There's a witty publicity campaign currently running in The Netherlands informing young surfers about the dangers of sexual harassment on the web. In its television ad embedded below (sent to me by Huuf) we witness an MSN Messenger webcam conversation gone horribly wrong.

The Wine Kone already warned us for them but InternetSOA.nl takes the term "Internet STDs" even further by describing maladies like the "crab mouse" and "digital warts".

Surely teens use the Internet and Messenger in particular to discuss sex all the time and there's nothing wrong with that as long as you take the necessary precautions, like "don't turn your webcam on", "don't send revealing pictures of yourself", and mom's golden oldie "don't talk to strangers". Though, that last advice is negotiable, because recently the Teen Sex Information Program has trained trustworthy teen volunteers to answer their peers's questions about sexual health, puberty, relationships and safer sex options via Messenger. All services are anonymous and confidential, and their Messenger name is deliberately off topic for PoS situations. The program is a service of the Planned Parenthood of Toronto agency and aims principally at Toronto youth. More information at Spiderbytes.ca.

[Source: The Star]



 Two more byoms
Two more byoms

dwergs says ( 03 Aug 2006 ):

 

darth vader display pictureAfter telling you about byoms (not "Bring your own Magical Sword" but "Build your own Microsoft Mobile Search") on Monday, Messer Aust Grunt sent me two he created himself. The first one is called File Finder Bot and searches for game and software downloads, and MP3s (add byoms-FileFinder@hotmail.com). His second byoms is one for the SW-fans and returns results from the so-called "Wookieepedia" (add byoms-StarWarsWiki@hotmail.com).

>> Tell me about your own cool byoms and get featured in our news!



 Blogs and IM make better friends
Blogs and IM make better friends

dwergs says ( 02 Aug 2006 ):

 

Yesterday evening Microsoft's blogging service MSN Spaces officially became part of the growing Windows Live family. The red thread through Windows Live Spaces is obviously social networking, as the renewed service more closely integrates with Messenger and Mail through Windows Live Contacts.

"Windows Live Spaces is designed to connect users to their real social network of friends [...] and introduce them to people through these trusted contacts. Users that are already on one another's Windows Live Messenger contact lists can initiate instant messaging conversations from within Windows Live Spaces Expanded social networking opportunities through Windows Live Spaces are balanced by enhanced privacy tools that give users full control over permission settings to specify who can contact them through the service, see their profile information and view the contents of their site. The respective permissions and communications preferences are clearly displayed alongside the user’s profile information and can be updated at any time. For those under age 18, the default setting in their Windows Live Spaces profile is that only people in the user's Windows Live Messenger contact list can gain access to his or her space."

The launch of the new Spaces coincides with the emergence of the Friends List feature in four extra regions. According to Messer CopySteel it is now available in China, DP-NiSh from India saw it appear in his Messenger's contact menus as well and the same goes for LeaVer from Brazil and Patrick from the United States. I have the feeling it has been enabled in other places as well, so check it out (right-click a random contact and take a look at the "View" menu) and let me know. UPDATE: Orhon spotted Friends List in Turkey, an anonymous Messer in Canada, ranteo and lighthouse in Singapore, Mablung in Sweden, odut86 and kevyn82 in Italy and Portugal, Nicolas in Belgium. That makes nine sixteen countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Italy, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, Turkey, UK and US. UPDATE Bis: Also confirmed for Mexico, France, Finland, Uruguay, Switzerland and Hong Kong by Cyberfisho, Romaric, AMOaROXANA, Tobias, KooBee, novolo, hkalanshiu and Amaris.

UPDATE #2: I guess it's worldwide then :P Sign-out and in again if you don't see it.

UPDATE #3: Check out the Windows Live Spaces fact sheet for a good overview of the specs and changes both generally as pertaining to Messenger.

[Reported by: Patrick Flynn, Dan Morell-Causer, Khyshen]



 Gwaam, will you survive (and win)?
Gwaam, will you survive (and win)?

dwergs says ( 01 Aug 2006 ):

 

gwaamGwaam is a guessing game in which you have to pick a blue or yellow "Gwaamian" within 20 seconds and then hope it'll be the least featured color in the area. Does this make any sense to you at all? I guess not, but you will get the idea once you play the game once or twice.

Originally built as a two-player Messenger activity for the World's Best App competition last year, J-Thread has now created a complementary bot (for the IOTR compo, of course) which you can challenge instead of your friends. As a little incentive to get you gwaaming, a Boston Acoustics Recepter Radio will be given away to the top scorer in August.

>> Add bot@gwaam.com to your Windows Live/MSN Messenger contact list (Fixed!).

>> Vote for the Gwaam bot here.



 Byoms on Windows Live Messenger
Byoms on Windows Live Messenger

dwergs says ( 31 Jul 2006 ):

 

From now on, the byoms technology by kozoru which we told you about two months ago is also available through Windows Live Messenger. Byoms, which stands for "build your own mobile search", allows users to create their own search engine for any possible chat application, accessible via PC or mobile phone.

One example of an existing byoms feed is the one trained against Wikipedia. Click here to add it to your Windows Live/MSN Messenger contact list.

I wanted to give it a go, but the confirmation e-mail I received at the end of the registration process contained a malformed link. You can try to sign up here yourself. UPDATE: Pieter just e-mailed me that simply replacing ws1 with byoms.com in the activation link sorts it out. They seem to have fixed the problem.

UPDATE #2: Ok, so I tested byoms and it's actually pretty cool. Now everybody can easily create their own little Messenger bots that return (Google/Yahoo!/MSN/...) search results for their own/favorite website. Try this one I made for Mess.be in about a minute. Clicking the actual results will probably cause heavy irritation, but you get the idea (and who knows, it might work in the near future after all).

UPDATE #3: The service is flipping out, I guess, judging by the offline status of "messbyoms" and its random short appearances. I'm suspending the bot for a while until things return normal again. Aah, gotta love newly launched services ;)

Tell me about your self-created byoms and I'll add the most useful ones to the site.

[Source: Press Release]



 Rock Star: Supernova
Rock Star: Supernova

dwergs says ( 31 Jul 2006 ):

 

Just like with last year's edition, Mark Burnett Productions has partnered with MSN again for providing exclusive online content for their second season of the Rock Star reality show which premiered at the start of this month. This season Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke and bass player Jason Newsted from Metallica, are in search of a lead singer for their new band, Supernova.

People living in the region where the show is aired are able to vote online for their favorite participant via a special Messenger tab. "You can vote after the show ends for four hours per time zone, subject to time zone limitations (...) In Asia, you can only vote after the morning airing of the show and in Iceland after the late night broadcast, not the prime time repeat airing."

Mark Burnett Productions and MSN have streamlined their collaboration processes, which already resulted in a 260 percent increase in votes cast via the Messenger tab and the Rock Star: Supernova homepage in the first week of the show. Unlike last year, there are no Messenger activities (yet?), but there's a free Windows Live/MSN Messenger theme with Display Pictures, Emoticons and Winks available here. If you're really a die hard fan of the show, you can also sign up for its Messenger alerts.



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